areas where children could learn about nature, a stage, and a worm farm. The Army Corps of Engineers itself erected a wooden footbridge connecting the shore to Heritage Island and Heritage Island to Kingman Island. The size of the theme park was also expanded to include Heritage Island. But four years and $4 million of public and private funds later, the proposal was abandoned. City officials said in 1980 that deteriorating budget conditions (caused by the beginning of the early 1980s recession) had led to "the worst budget crisis in the city's history", and officials could no longer justify spending another $4 million to complete the park. But 15 years later, press reports laid the failure of the project to a decision by Congress and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to withhold funds for the project. District officials built a fence around the shores of Kingman and Heritage Island in the early 1980s to protect them from illegal dumping and vandalism, but the fences did not work. Businesses and members of the public dumped discarded construction materials and other waste on the islands, and homeless people often tried to live there. In 1986, D.C. officials considered building a new District of Columbia Jail on Kingman Island, but the National Park Service still controlled the island and refused to consider the idea. Two years later, the District of Columbia was looking for a way to upgrade RFK Stadium so that the Washington Redskins would continue to play their games inside the city limits. D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon proposed allowing the Redskins to build a new stadium on the parking lots adjacent to RFK Stadium and replacing the lost parking lots with new ones built on Kingman Island—a proposal that included tearing up Langston Golf Course and turning it, too, into parking lots. In 1991, as the District still struggled to craft a deal to build a new stadium, Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. forced Mayor Dixon to agree to preserve Langston Golf Course (although Lujan did agree to allow a redesign of the facility to accommodate some stadium parking). New children's theme park proposal A renewed effort to build a children's theme park emerged during this period as well. In 1983, a new company, National Children's Island, Inc., was formed to act as the new developer. In 1991, the company proposed yet another large